Underwear Firm Betting on the Power of Internet

SAN FRANCISCO â€”  How do you get pants onto a twentysomething? The Internet, of course.

That’s Joe Boxer’s new ad strategy.

On bus shelter posters and billboards in California, the designer underwear maker features a torso-down picture of a model wearing bright yellow boxer shorts painted with a happy face.

After its slogan, where one might expect to find an address, phone number or store name, there’s only: “Contact us in underwear cyberspace; Internet! [email protected]â€�

Cryptic to many, perhaps, but not to the plugged-in.

The young and computer savvy are prime customers for Joe Boxer Inc., a privately held San Francisco company known for wild designs and wilder advertising.

Its executives figured that electronic mail would be a hip way to stay in touch with them.

So, a few months ago, Joe Boxer gave up its toll-free phone line for an address on the Internet, the worldwide network of private, public and academic computer networks.

The number had been used to direct people to stores that sell Joe Boxer boxers. But e-mail has given the company more contact with the customers who use it. About 15 to 20 messages arrive a day and each gets an individual response.

“It opens up one-on-one communication. Rather than calling an 800 number and getting an operator who just has some information, they get the Joe Boxer culture--really wacky and really real,� said Tessa Graham, the company’s international coordinator.

“This way we can have real communication with our customers,� she said. “They can directly ask us the specific question they want to ask. And it lets us find out who these people who love our underwear are.�

There’s more and more commerce on the Internet. Many computer companies have e-mail access to their customers and more non-technical businesses are entering the electronic arena.

One, The Internet Mall, offers everything from books to flowers. But for most, e-mail is only an adjunct to more traditional marketing and service. Joe Boxer seems to be one of the first non-technical companies to make e-mail its primary method for talking to customers.

The company has been using the e-mail address since February. The ads began last month in San Francisco and Los Angeles and appeared in Details magazine.

“I think it’s a very smart campaign,� said John Hoag, director of marketing at BARRNet, an Internet service provider in Palo Alto.

“Having an e-mail address is becoming as important in business as having a telephone number. There are 20 million people on the Internet. We’ll definitely be seeing more of this,� he said.

The messages Joe Boxer gets range from perky to risque.

“I’m a student at Brandeis University,� one man wrote. “I used your campaign for a paper I had to write about advertising. I got an A and to celebrate my girlfriend bought me a pair of the (Nose Not Included) boxers.�